The New Gentrification
The Friday Times took another look at the work of Jane Jacobs, who “waged heroic war against planners who dreamed of paving the Village’s cobblestone streets, demolishing its tenements and creating sterile superblocks.” According to Sharon Zukin, a Brooklyn College sociology professor and author of Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places,…
The Friday Times took another look at the work of Jane Jacobs, who “waged heroic war against planners who dreamed of paving the Village’s cobblestone streets, demolishing its tenements and creating sterile superblocks.” According to Sharon Zukin, a Brooklyn College sociology professor and author of Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places, saving the cobblestone streets and old architecture may retain a neighborhood’s character superficially, but is doesn’t do much for the community who gave the neighborhood its soul. Zukin paid a visit to Williamsburg (“the East River gold coast”), where she pointed out “a low-slung old granary with a MacBook-speckled coffee bar” and said, We’ve gone from Jacobs’s vision to the McDonald’s of the educated classes. Are you buying what Zukin’s selling?
A Contrarian’s Lament in a Blitz of Gentrification [NYT]
Maly’s got it.
Also, it’s a mistake to think that only the middle class and/or whites like historic neighborhoods. Lots of pride in Fort Greene, Clinton Hill, Bed Stuy, Crown Heights.
This lady is lamenting the loss of the corner grocer cuz the Village, like Sesame St, ain’t as quaint without him. If she wants real working class neighborhoods in New York, there are quite a few to choose from.
wasnt the UWS mad ghetto back in the day?
*rob*
My take on the article is that Ms Zukin is not so much questioning Jane Jacobs, but noticing that the ideals Jacobs espoused are now on steroids in many neighborhoods. That the Jacobian ideal of the Village as a village has been Disneyfied, if you will, into what much of the West Village is now, an uber-rich enclave masquerading as a quaint 19th century town, with character and characters tossed in for authenticity. She has a point.
However, I do not get from the article, that she is any more prone to give up those ideals that Jacobs would have been, even as Zukin laments the fate of Jane’s old haunts. I agree with Minard, “The best we can do with enlightened preservation and zoning is to save the context, the environment, the people who chose to dwell in the environment is up for grabs and that is how it should be,” with the exception that I feel a little social tinkering, as mopar advocates is in order. She is also right about how a neighborhood morphs, I’ve seen in Bed Stuy and Crown Heights for the last 20 years, the students, the right out of college renters, especially those with an artistic proclivity, who are the shock troops of gentrification. And in our inner city neighborhoods, when a suffient number of move into a neighborhood, then that neighborhood is deemed “discovered” and deeper pockets arrive, this time buying, not renting.
I don’t think Zukin, or even Jacobs, per se, was thinking about that kind of gentrification, which can be much more racially and economically polarizing than what took place in the Village, or even Williamsburg. What still comes through both women’s work is the appreciation of the architecture, the buildings that make up these neighborhoods, and the need to keep them around, whether for the old timers, or the new gentry. It really is a delicate balancing act, I feel, that cannot be all of one thing or another, like most things in life, a great deal of willingness to compromise must be sought, so that progress can co-exist with preservation.
If someone has the exact demographic statistics for the UWS over the course of the last 50 years, please share them with us.
i never said compared to 25 years ago buttmunch
*rob*
To say that the UWS is pretty diverse compared to 25 years ago is “pretty stupid”.
Posted by: ecoux at February 22, 2010 10:01 AM
Gentrification is making lots of neighborhoods more diverse in Brooklyn.
Rob,
To say that the UWS is pretty diverse compared to 25 years ago is “pretty stupid”.
There’s a whiff of the Ugly American in this whole process. Let’s go someplace new but bring all our stuff so it isn’t too new. I’m not saying you can stop it and maybe you shouldn’t. But something is certainly lost along the way.
This article is just romantic and narcissistic drivel about the glamour of living in trash-strewn hovels.
Posted by: Maly at February 22, 2010 9:57 AM
QOTD